Gainesville is home to the Florida Gators, orange and blue colors, sticky bar floors, Tom Petty’s legacy and red solo cups, but right inside do-it-yourself (DIY) venues, house shows and downtown bars, one finds several countercultural forces of nature: the punk rock crowd.
Since the 1980s, alternative fashion, art, music, culture and expression have carved out their own place against mainstream norms and standards. These themes are found in a UF honors class, “Gainesville Punk: A History of a City and a Scene,” taught by Matt Walker and Regan Garner.
Students in the course get to explore the relationship between the city, UF and the punk scene. It is centered around Walker’s book, “Gainesville Punk: A History of Bands & Music,” which documents the local punk scene from the 1980s to the late 2010s.
Walker said he hopes to connect Gainesville’s culture to students who live here for a few years or stay on campus. “We wanted to give students the context of the history and the interaction between the city of Gainesville and the University of Florida,” he said.
Lia Swanson, a UF English and math freshman, is enrolled in the course. Swanson was familiar with the Gainesville-rooted bands Against Me! and Less Than Jake. She stumbled on Gainesville Punk while looking through different classes to complete her honors requirement.
For extra credit, Swanson volunteered at FEST, the annual local punk, rock and alternative music festival hosted at various local venues. At FEST 22, Swanson worked as a stagehand at Bo Diddley Plaza, responsible for setting up the stage, lights, sound equipment and other materials.
Swanson said she appreciated how others with more life experience enjoyed themselves at the music festival just as much as the younger generation, and that they looked after her as well.
“You see these dudes in their 50s in pickle and banana costumes having the time of their life,” she said. “You can tell that these adults, who are significantly older than me, being 18, were looking out for me, even in little ways.”
Garner noted how punk music has helped downtown Gainesville, as over the years artists, creatives and punks have flocked to its bars, clubs and city centers to play shows.
She is careful, however, about becoming too nostalgic. Things back then weren’t better years ago, they were just different, she said. And yet older punks stay in Gainesville for a variety of reasons, including its low cost of living and, of course, the music and scene.